Chapter 7: The Wall of Weird
Chloe Sullivan's grip on my wrist was surprisingly strong for someone who spent most of her time behind a keyboard.
"You. Me. Torch office. Now."
She dragged me down the hallway before I could protest. Students parted around us like we were a two-person emergency vehicle. Pete Ross trailed behind, looking amused.
"Chloe, I have math—"
"Math can wait. This is important."
The Torch office occupied a corner of Smallville High's basement, squeezed between the janitor's closet and what might have once been a bomb shelter. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead. The smell of old paper and printer ink hung thick in the air.
But none of that mattered compared to what covered the far wall.
The Wall of Weird.
I'd seen it in the show a hundred times, but standing in front of it felt different. Newspaper clippings, photos, police reports, hand-drawn diagrams—hundreds of pieces of Smallville's strangest history, tacked up in overlapping layers like scales on some paper dragon.
"Beautiful, isn't it?" Chloe released my wrist and spread her arms wide. "Every unexplained incident, every mysterious death, every 'official explanation' that made zero sense. All of it. Right here."
"This is..." I stepped closer, scanning headlines I already knew by heart. Boy Survives Three-Story Fall Without Injury. Local Woman Claims Telepathic Dog. Spontaneous Combustion at County Fair. "...impressive."
"It's obsessive is what it is," Pete said from the doorway. "Chloe's been working on it since eighth grade."
"Ninth grade. And it's not obsessive, it's thorough." Chloe pulled out a chair, pushed me into it. "Now. I've been watching you for three weeks."
My shoulders tensed.
"That sounds stalker-adjacent."
"It sounds like journalism." She perched on the edge of her desk, arms crossed. "You show up out of nowhere. Meteor rock totals your car. You're quiet, you're observant, and you write better than half my staff. Plus, you keep asking questions that are just a little too good."
Careful. She's fishing.
"I ask questions because I'm curious."
"You ask questions like you already know the answers." Chloe leaned forward. "Which is why I want you on the Torch."
The tension in my chest released slightly.
"You're recruiting me?"
"I'm conscripting you. Big difference." She grinned. "You're smart, you're new, and you don't have any of the political baggage that comes from growing up in a town this small. I need fresh eyes on this stuff."
She gestured at the Wall.
[OPPORTUNITY: ACCESS TO CHLOE SULLIVAN'S RESEARCH. STRATEGIC VALUE: HIGH.]
No kidding, System.
"What would I be doing?"
"Research. Interviews. Maybe some writing if you're not terrible at it." Chloe hopped off the desk, grabbed a stack of folders. "But mostly? Helping me find patterns."
"Patterns?"
"Look at the Wall." She waved at the chaos of paper. "Twelve years of weird. There's something connecting all of it—I know there is. I just can't see what."
I turned back to the Wall. Pretended to study it with fresh eyes.
The truth was, I could see the pattern immediately. The meteor shower of 1989 was ground zero. Every significant incident radiated outward from impact sites. The freaks weren't random—they were created by proximity to kryptonite, their powers shaped by trauma and circumstance.
But I couldn't say that. Not yet.
"Have you tried organizing by location?" I asked instead. "Mapping where things happened, not just when?"
Chloe's eyes lit up.
"I started to, but the pins kept falling out of my board." She dug through her desk, produced a battered map of Smallville and surrounding areas. "You think geography matters?"
"Everything happens somewhere." I took the map, spread it across the desk. "What if where matters as much as what?"
Three hours later, we'd created something new.
The Wall remained, but now it had a companion—a map dotted with colored pins, each representing a different type of incident. Red for violence. Blue for disappearances. Green for unexplained phenomena. Yellow for deaths.
The pattern emerged like a photograph developing in chemical solution.
"Holy crap," Pete said. He'd come back with pizza an hour ago and stayed to watch. "They're all clustered."
He was right. The pins formed constellations around specific locations. Miller's Field. Chandler's old quarry. The land behind the Luthor fertilizer plant. And at the center of it all—
"The 1989 impact sites," Chloe breathed. "Cole, you beautiful genius. The meteor shower. That's the connection."
I shrugged, hiding satisfaction behind a slice of pepperoni.
"Just organized what was already there."
"No, you saw what I couldn't." She was already pulling clippings off the Wall, rearranging them to match the new geography. "The rocks. The freaking rocks. That's what's changing people."
My stomach clenched. She was getting close—closer than I wanted her to be, this early.
"That's a big leap," I said carefully. "Rocks making people weird?"
"Is it? Look at the timing. Look at the locations." Chloe's voice had taken on that manic quality I recognized from the show—the sound of a journalist on a scent. "Something in those meteors is affecting people. Mutating them, maybe. Like radiation, but selective."
Too close. Way too close.
"Or it's coincidence." I reached for another slice of pizza. "Correlation isn't causation."
Chloe shot me a look.
"You don't believe that."
"I believe we need more evidence before we start claiming space rocks create supervillains."
The word slipped out before I could stop it. Supervillains. Not a term Chloe used. Not yet.
Her eyes narrowed. Just for a second. Then she smiled.
"You're right. More evidence. That's why I need you on the team." She stuck out her hand. "Welcome to the Torch, Cole Harrison. Let's find some truth."
I shook her hand.
[SOCIAL ALLIANCE FORMED: TORCH STAFF. ACCESS LEVEL: INCREASED.]
Pete raised his pizza slice in a toast.
"To the new guy. May your time on Smallville's weirdest newspaper be only mildly traumatizing."
"The weirdest newspaper in Smallville is the Ledger," Chloe corrected. "We're the most accurate."
I laughed. Genuine, surprised. The pizza was mediocre and my back itched where the old laceration had finally healed, but something in my chest loosened for the first time since I'd arrived in this world.
Maybe this won't be so bad.
The walk home took longer than usual. I kept stopping to review the mental map I'd built, comparing it to what I remembered from the show.
Coach Walt Arnold. The pyrokinetic. That was the next major incident, if my timeline was right. Football tryouts were this week. The coach's breakdown would follow soon after.
[STRATEGIC NOTE: PREEMPTIVE POSITIONING RECOMMENDED. THREAT ASSESSMENT WINDOW: 5-8 DAYS.]
Five to eight days. Time to prepare.
I'd learned from the Greg Arkin situation. Stumbling into danger blind was a good way to get killed. But with the Torch's resources and my foreknowledge, I could be in the right place at the right time.
Support Clark. Don't be the hero. Just be useful.
The plan felt solid. Felt right.
I didn't notice the black car that had been following me for three blocks until it turned down a side street and disappeared.
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